me and the dog took a two-mile or so loop around grant park today, which we haven't done in a long time --- (my grandma always called it "grant's park," since when she came along when it was still known as the park col. grant donated to the city in 1882 --- i like that park since the topography hasn't been so thoroughly reworked as it has at piedmont park --- there's a whole lot of construction activity on the east side of the zoo, where' they're building a new snake pit, or "reptile house" as they call it --- the afternoon gave dog the opportunity to, among other things, rub his head in horse dung when i wasn't looking

28 October 2013

dog and i walked the tanyard creek trail today --- technically a part of the beltline trail although it has nothing to do with railroads except at its southern end which passes under the old railroad trestle for the part of the beltline that runs just north of piedmont hospital ---

this looked suspiciously like a beaver dam, although i didn't see beaver --- but i did see muskrat at work (note that they are not really rats at all)

the northern end of the trail ends at Colonial Homes, bordering the Bobby Jones golf course on the way --- the course is built on what was surely once great farmland in the floodplain on both sides of Tanyard Creek

at two spots there are great stands of loblolly pines, both despoiled by playground equipment, although it makes sense to put them there since pine oil is such a good disinfectant

27 October 2013

the elevators, the building, and the streets were a mess last night with what must have been a gazillion parties going on --- dog was concerned with all the irregularly dressed humans, he having an eye for that sort of thing

broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime― mark twain

truly, what of good

ever have prophets brought to men?

craft of many words,

only through

evil your message speaks.

seers bring aye

terror, so to keep

men afraid.

―

aeschylus

he cannot be a gentleman which loveth not a dog.

john northbrooke, c. 1570

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

john stuart mill in a letter to conservative mp sir john pakington (march 1866)